Threat intelligence refers to evidence-based historical data about cyber threats and criminals. Data can include information about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOC). This data is collected, processed, and analyzed to reveal threat actors’ motives, targets, and attack behaviors. Equipped with data-driven insights, security teams can more effectively prevent or mitigate threats.
But in a world where sophisticated attacks are rendering even the best cybersecurity measures obsolete, as stated by the Global Risks Report 2022, threat intelligence alone may not be enough. In addition, alerts fatigue is a problem with overburdened security teams looking to get more actionable insight from the large volumes of data. Without easy-to-use, automated remediation measures, fast-evolving threats and the large amount of intelligence will overwhelm most security teams.
What is Digital Shadows? Digital Shadows is a threat intelligence solution connecting SecOps teams with relevant data feeds aligned to specific organizational profiles. It enables personnel to filter out noise, identify critical risks, and initiate response processes. However, it does not offer the fast-paced, automated remediation measures that can keep up with the growing online threats.
The threat intelligence landscape is populated with several alternatives to Digital Shadows. With the Digital Shadows overview above and the rundown of the top five Digital Shadows competitors below, we hope this helps your security operations prepare for new threats.
The Top 5 Alternatives to Digital Shadows
1) Bolster
According to SlashNext, the first six months of 2022 saw over 255 million phishing attacks, indicating that traditional security measures such as email gateways, anti-viruses, and firewalls were not enough to combat the growing threats. Of these, 54% were zero-day threats showing how attackers were evading detection by adopting new TTPs. In order combat these new threats, it is important to harden one’s security posture with an digital risk protection vendor that scours the internet for potential threats and automatically takes them down when the site or account becomes malicious.
Bolster uses a patented detection engine with underlying machine learning models to mimic a SOC analyst. Whether it is websites, social media platforms, forums, app stores, or even the dark net, Bolster can detect and protect against phishing campaigns, typo squat domains, brand thieves, and other online scams. Bolster combines real-time detection with automated takedowns to mitigate online risk all without human intervention.
Bolster has an accuracy rate of 99.99%, the highest in the industry and can detect Bolster detects 80% of malicious site within the first 6 hours of site becoming weaponized. All the gathered threat intelligence is displayed in actionable visualizations offering unmatched visibility across channels. With Bolster, security teams don’t just gain access to noise-free intelligence but also to a proactive automatic remediation solution.
2) IBM X-Force
IBM launched the X-Force Exchange Threat Intelligence Platform in 2015 to share its vast repository of threat information and related data with the public to build a collaborative defense network. X-Force integrates enterprise-grade external security threat information with the right tools to aid security personnel in analyzing and understanding evolving threats.
IBM offers machine-generated and human-generated insights on the latest malware threats to empower security personnel to research threat indicators and accelerate the response. While it also encourages collaboration between peers and aims to enforce threat intelligence delivered through open standards, it does not offer automated detection and takedowns and rather depends on their own managed services and a collection of blacklists.
3) Cobwebs
Cobwebs is an AI-powered open-source intelligence platform to protect organizations, institutions, and communities from cybercrime by giving them seamless access to publicly available threat intelligence. It pairs OSINT with proprietary artificial intelligence tools to quickly analyze a wealth of information and automatically detect patterns and uncover leads.
The customizable, user-friendly UI and self-learning web intelligence solution make it a formidable product. However, Cobwebs still requires human, manual analysis aided by their web assistant to address the challenges of the browsing environment done by security and forensic researchers.
4) MISP
Solid threat intelligence requires collaboration. Organizations must be willing to share data and insights to protect themselves and others. Built to promote cooperation and communication between companies and individuals, MISP is a collaborative, open-source threat intelligence sharing platform that stores technical and non-technical data of attacks. MISP uses IOCs to detect and prevent perimeter breaches.
MISP can automatically correlate attributes with indicators to flesh out their shared relationship. This information is stored and transmitted over a shared database that organizations can access. Its UI and built-in sharing functionality encourage collaboration. MISP also offers localized classification schemes with a flexible API for seamless integrations. While MISP offers many open source modelling, easy documentation, and access to their communities, they do not offer actionable insight or remediation strategies for organizations.
5) Kaspersky
Mainly known for their endpoint security solutions, Kaspersky also offers services to aid in threat intelligence. The Kaspersky Threat Intelligence portfolio offers services such as their data feeds, threat lookup, and cloud sandbox to track, analyze, interpret, and mitigate evolving threats. It integrates threat data feeds to arm security executives with up-to-date information about suspicious IPs, URLs, and file hashes, keeping them one step ahead of persistent threats.
Kaspersky follows this up by tagging each record from the integrated data feeds with actionable context to reveal the threat actor’s intent, motive, and method. Its CyberTrace module eliminates noise and equips personnel with a massive cache of relevant threat data. Kaspersky compiles all the information into a global outlook that consists of all new and emerging threats. It offers sandboxing capabilities for further investigation and behavioral analysis for threats that aren’t recognizable. While the Kaspersky portfolio offers data feeds, threat lookup, and cloud sandboxing, they are lacking in real-time threat detection and remediation workflows.
Be Proactive with Your Threat Intelligence
With cyber threats projected to cost the global economy $10.5 trillion by 2025, it’s no surprise that 72% of decision-makers are looking to increase their investments in intelligence solutions. While access to threat intelligence can reveal critical insights, it does little to eliminate the threat if remediation workflows are not put into place. In addition, the IT skills shortage is a challenge for most organization looking to reduce the noise of alerts and false positives that come from many threat intelligence feeds. As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, bringing in new attack vectors and threats daily, organizations need a proactive solution that couples high-fidelity detection with automated remediation. Only then can security teams respond in real-time and contain the growing online threats.
